[SWLUG] Alan's open letter

[Gareth Lewis]

 (same proviso ! this is not official at all - just my take on things )

ok,   the situation in UK law is based on where the case law has arrived  at today and a little on where the European patent office has arrived at  (the EPO is a treaty org. that is totally separate from the EU).  Patents that are basically software that does something 'technical' are allowed today, but they are restricted.      

The case law has been evolving since the UK 1977 / 1988 Acts and there has been a fair change in the technology and commercial world since the 77 act was drafted.    The EPO and the UK don't allow a lot of software inventions that the US for example now does allow.  

It is not impossible for pressure resulting from the permissive US patent system to make  the UK / EPO slowly more and more permissive.  In the extreme, you only need the house of lords to handle a case like the supreme court did in the state street bank case in the US (unlikely !) for things to change radically.  

So,  the reason a EU (not EPO) software directive may be a good thing is that it provides a legislative line in the sand to replace the current position arrived at through the case law and makes it harder to move towards the US 'allow patents on anything useful to man' position.  It also is hoped to make it clearer to decide what is and isn't allowed - and in typical EU fashion - more consistent across the EU.   It is hoped that the grey area of what is/isn't allowed becomes less murky.

So a software directive may well stop the EU (UK)  going down the US route.   This could be seen as a good thing.         

OS advocates may well like it to change the status quo and make less software patents  allowable.   So they may see the 'status quo' directive as a bad thing in that it would make it harder to move to a less permissive regime in the future.   

Gareth.   

PS,
    software that controls the power supply of an X-ray machine would probably be allowed today in the UK or a new method of compressing video data probably would be ok,   but a complier probably wouldn't be and an online shopping system wouldn't be.    communication protocols in some circumstances are also ok.   

there's loads of stuff at  www.patent.gov.uk if you hunt about a bit.   

>>> Telsa Gwynne <hobbit at aloss.ukuu.org.uk> 09 June 2004 09:28:43 >>>
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 04:40:44PM +0100 or thereabouts, Gareth Lewis wrote:
> I am speaking(typing) personally and not in any official capacity here !

Yeah, I can see that with that email address you might need to point
that out :) 

> Why ?   well,  if the ONLY option is to have the software
> directive in its 'keep roughly the status-quo' form or not have
> any  directive at all,  its better for the OS community to have
> the software directive.   

I don't understand this. We had no directive before. Why is 
having the directive better than having none?

Telsa


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